By the New York Post's reckoning, yesterday's trading netted the entertainment mogul somewhere in the neighborhood of $8.7 million.

Meanwhile, 50 Cent remains on Twitter, encouraging his millions of followers to continue the conversation he's started. "I only want entrepreneurs on my time line. We gonna talk money trade ideas and make it big," he tweets. Looks like he's taking a page out of the Stockpickr or StockTwits playbook.

He's also getting a little more defiant, retweeting one fan's comment: "those who dont take your ventures serious are silly haters & must be poor business people." This is a departure from last night's broadcast, during which he urged investor caution.

We're still a little concerned about the fate of H & H Imports, which has been losing money since it started doing business. We put in a call to H & H for comment, whereupon a secretary told The Observer "Everyone's in a meeting right now. Things are a little crazy." We will, of course, update when we hear more.

mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor

In a recent tweet, 50 cent cautions his followers, "I own HNHI stock thoughts on it are my opinion. Talk to financial advisor about it." Also: "HNHI is the right investment for me it may or may not be right for u! Do ur homework." This follows the stock's meteoric rise today and a likely profit for 50 Cent, who along with G-Unit Brands made a $750,000 investment in the company last November. 

Here's the website for TV Goods, whose parent company is H & H Imports. From the "About Us" section:

H&H Imports is the parent company for TVGoods, Inc., a Direct Response marketing organization. The company identifies, develops, markets, and distributes consumer products for global distribution. Our strategy employs three primary channels: Direct Response Television (Infomercials), Television Shopping Networks and Retail Outlets. TVGoods offers entrepreneurs a turnkey solution enabling entrepreneurs to introduce products to the consumer market.

50 Cent's caveats come on top of several caution-inducing attributes of the company, including a loan to the company from its CEO, Steve Rogai, and a loss of $1.3 million in the most recent quarter. The company's chairman and founder, Kevin Harrington, is an infomercial pioneer and "an investor 'Shark' on the ABC television series Shark Tank," according to H & H's website. 

Of additional note: 50 Cent appeared on CNBC Friday to talk about investments, and mentioned a new line of headphones he's endorsing. A putative press release notes the increase in H & H's share price thusly:

The Company that had acquired worldwide marketing rights for its new product line believed to be designed by 50 and engineered by Sleek and will be the first headphones ever to offer 'Wireless Hybrid' technology with military-grade metals. The endorsement will be personally carried out by Curtis, having an ownership interest in Sleek, through his company G-unit.

One more Tweet from 50 Cent around the time of his stock discussions: "You can lead a horse to water but you force it to drink. lol."

Earlier: Get Rich Or Die Tweeting: 50 Cent Plugs Sketchy Penny Stock, Shares Skyrocket >>

mtaylor@observer.com | @mbrookstaylor

• During the fiscal year ended March 2010, H & H lent $141,000 to "an entity in which our Chairman's brother is an officer and owner." 
• The company claimed losses of more than $1.3 million dollars in the most recent quarter and $3.3 million since its inception.
• The CEO of the company "loaned the Company funds to meet short-term working capital. These loans totaled $107,000 and $107,513, with related accrued interest of $4,494 and $2,321 at September 30, 2010 and March 31, 2010, respectively."

Mr. Weisenthal of Business Insider says the company distributes headphones, but this Bloomberg company profile, published today, tells a slightly different story:

As of May 28, 2010, H & H Imports Inc. was acquired by TV Goods, Inc., in a reverse merger transaction. H & H Imports, Inc., a development stage company, engages in the wholesale purchase and sale of women's handbags. It focuses to sells its handbags to beauty salons, nail salons, beauty supply stores, and women's health clubs. The company was founded in 2006 and is based in Plantation, Florida.

The Yahoo! Finance profile offers a similar characterization. Here's an SEC filing dated Dec. 9 disclosing 50 Cent and G-Unit Brands' Nov. 30, 2010 transaction with H & H, in which the rap mogul bought $750,000 worth of shares and warrants in the company. If he were to sell today, it's likely he would have made quite a handsome profit.

Update: 50 Cautions Investors His Penny Stock May Not Be Right For Them >>

mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor

Earlier this year, when The Observer profiled the former New York governor's odd involvement with penny stocks, the article opened with a scene inside a 36-foot geodesic dome. "It's tremendous," he said, celebrating the tiny plastics company, Perf Go Green, whose board he'd joined. Music from instruments called the drum orb and earth harp played. One arm was in the air. "I'm honored to be a part of it, particularly standing here in this Earth Dome," he said.

Not very long afterward, the company collapsed, and even had money disagreements with the firm that made the dome, now in a storage unit in Hollywood, CA.

In the wake of Perf Go Green, Mr. Pataki became an advisor to another penny stock called Mesa Energy, which has been suspected of connections to pump-and-dump schemes: After Mr. Pataki's involvement was announced, the stock was touted by promoters as a 809% stock winner. "If I wanted to get involved with a couple of penny stocks because of people I knew, so be it," Charles Gargano, the longtime Pataki associate, former Empire State Development Corporation chairman, and another Perf chairperson, told The Observer this year, speaking from Palm Beach. "That's my prerogative."

Mesa, though, is not doing well. During the quiet weeks of August, it announced in a short filing that it is under formal investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. "Company management is confident that no improper sales of unregistered securities were made by current officers, directors or employees of the Company or its subsidiaries," it said. "The Company is cooperating with the SEC staff."

At the time of The Observer story, Mesa Energy Holdings, Inc.'s stock price had gone up to $3, the same mark that Perf Go Green had hit after the governor joined. Today, Mesa happened to match its 52-week low, and is hovering around 15 cents.

Mr. Pataki did not immediately respond to a request sent through a spokesperson.

Does his decision have anything to do with the news of his connection to a recently-failed penny stock called Perf Go Green, or to Mesa Energy Holdings? Mesa has been the subject of hilariously intense recent stock promotions, like one from Jarret B. Wollstein that says it's on track to be his "next 809% stock winner." That comes with a small disclaimer that says Mr. Wollstein got thousands of dollars from Mesa shareholders "who may or will sell shares of the feature Company at or about the time of this report," which looks and smells an awful lot like a pump-and-dump scheme. Mr. Wollstein, incidentally, was caught up in strange penny stock dealings with Shaquille O'Neal, too.

But never mind all that.

The Journal article does not mention his board positions at those companies. 

Mr. Pataki said that he wants to focus on forming an organization that will work on repealing health care reform. His group is called Revere America.

A few months earlier, the former New York governor's picture was featured in penny-stock promotions pitching the company: Emails said that buyers could make millions. But a spokesman told the Post then that Mr. Pataki hadn't known about them, and the scandal didn't last long. "I'm honored to be a part of it, particularly standing here in this Earth Dome," he said to the crowd at the party, with one arm in the air. "It is just terrific."

The company did not do so well. Last month, according to S.E.C. filings, Mr. Pataki resigned from Perf Go Green's board, along with his longtime associate Charles Gargano, the former Empire State Development Corporation chairman, and the get-rich author David Bach.

Two weeks later, its chief executive, Anthony Tracy, left, too. "There's really nothing left of Perf Go Green," Mr. Gargano said from Palm Beach. The company, whose stock rose above $3 after he and Mr. Pataki were named to its board, was trading at $.05 earlier this week.

But the former governor has already moved on to another over-the-counter stock. This month, exactly a week after Perf Go Green's CEO stepped down, Mr. Pataki was named to the advisory board of Mesa Energy Holdings, a natural-gas exploration company focused on a New York section of the Marcellus Shale, a gargantuan gas-bearing rock.

If post-gubernatorial life is supposed to be relatively tranquil, the world of penny stocks is not. They are avoided by serious investors because of thin trading and low share prices, which leave them open to manipulation. S.E.C. investigations are commonplace. In the two weeks since Mr. Pataki joined Mesa, two brightly colored promotions touting his involvement have been making the rounds. "Urgent," says one. "You can profit from America's New Energy Revolution. Discover how Mesa Energy Holdings could skyrocket 545% in the next 12 months."

"Even former New York Governor George Pataki," says the other, "has been leading the charge."

PERF GO GREEN HOLDINGS began life as a company that set out to provide help to non-English-speaking Hispanic people in North Carolina, S.E.C. filings say, "but it did not establish operations in connection with its business plan." The retooled firm went public in May 2008, offering products like 16-Gallon Extra Tall Kitchen Trash Bags and Kitty Litter Pan Liners.

"When consumers purchase a Perf Go Green product, they will be making a conscious decision to better the environment," Mr. Tracy, the CEO, said then.

When Mr. Pataki joined the board at the end of that month, he got options to buy one million shares at half a dollar each, less than a quarter of its price then. A few weeks later, the Post article about the promotions was unflattering and cinematic. The paper said that the company's CFO had done accounting for the Teamsters and that its chief operating officer, Michael Caridi, had "dabbled in real estate, concrete, security services and ship salvaging."

It left out that Mr. Gargano, who became a Perf Go Green director a few days after Mr. Pataki, and was given options to buy 200,000 shares at half a dollar, had been profiled as a serial penny-stock board member in The New York Times. "While it is not illegal for someone to lend his prestige to a tiny, troubled company, it is unusual for someone with an important government position to do so," the paper wrote in 2002, rattling off his connections to a golf-club maker that distributed Korean nasal sprays; an electrical-equipment distributor that shifted into an Eastern European health clinic operator; and a firm that tried to put James Dean's likeness on socks.

"And it remains unclear," The Times said, "why Mr. Gargano would be willing to risk his reputation by becoming involved in shaky companies."

"Didn't mean crap to me," Mr. Gargano told The Observer this week about that article. "Every once in a while, someone would come to me. I'd either make an investment or maybe not, or be involved somehow, but they meant nothing to me."

But what if the companies' stock traded over the counter for a few dollars, or less? "There might have been some penny stocks. Of course! So what," he said. "If I wanted to get involved with a couple of penny stocks because of people I knew, so be it. That's my prerogative."

At Perf Go Green, he knew Mr. Caridi, the chief operating officer. Reached at the company's office this week, the executive said he, a secretary and a holding company were all that was left, though a spin-off of the company's battery-product division will be announced soon. Mr. Pataki, he said, had been very helpful. "He was always very concerned and caring," he said, "and always wanted to see the company succeed."

"As board members, we did everything possible to give our advice for how the company could not only survive but better itself," Mr. Gargano said. "We just got caught at a time when the economy really dropped severely."

THE TWO ARE NOT the only political leaders who have dabbled in penny stocks. Four years ago, for example, the retired general and former presidential candidate Wesley Clark joined an energy and security firm called ViaSpace. He left two weeks later after complaints about the firm's online stock promotions. That company has traded below $.02 since late January.

After Mr. Pataki's appointment to Mesa Energy Holdings this month, two stock promoters wrote gushingly about the natural-gas company and its new adviser. "I don't own this stock," one of them, Harris Roen, said this week. "I didn't want to be accused of pump-and-dump."

The other report was from Jarret B. Wollstein, whose Web site says he's an investment newsletter publisher, a Mensa member and a geopolitical writer who has predicted major terrorist attacks. "Mesa Energy (MSEH) is on track for potentially huge profits-becoming my next 809% stock winner," he wrote. "Invest now and you could turn $10,000 into $90,900 in just 8 months."

At the bottom of the Web page is a link to a disclaimer that says he received $5,000 for the report from a group named Northbound Marketing, which in turn was paid by one or more Mesa shareholders "who may or will sell shares of the feature Company at or about the time of this report."

Yesterday, Mesa CEO Randy Griffin said he doesn't know which shareholders hired the marketer, but that he was not overly worried about it. "There are a significant number of shareholders out there," he said.

This month, his company's stock price has gone up to around $3, the same mark that Perf Go Green hit after Mr. Pataki joined. It was below a dollar earlier this year. "As far as his involvement in our company goes, I would have to say I was a little surprised and certainly pleased that something we're trying to do is something he recognized and wanted to get involved in," Mr. Griffin said. He would not discuss the governor's compensation, but said it would be disclosed shortly.

Mr. Pataki did not respond to questions sent through a spokesperson about why he has gotten involved in penny stocks, and why he went so quickly from one to the other.

"I always tell people when they get on a board to make sure that D&O policies are paid up, because you can spend everything you made on your lawyers," said the law professor and former S.E.C. senior attorney Peter Henning, referring to directors and officers liability insurance. "You get dragged into an S.E.C. investigation, oh God, the dollar figures are just going to go through the roof."

Meanwhile, the plastic company's 36-foot dome is sitting in storage in Hollywood, Calif. "We created this Earth Dome for them and they did not pay their bills," said a representative for Luxe-Media, which produced it. "Our experience with Perf Go Green was very bad."